Cliburn wrap-up
Gold medal: e.a. Nobuyuki Tsujii (Japan) and Zhang Haochen (China)
Silver medal: Son Yeol Eum (Korea)
Crystal award: n.p.
Finalists: Evgeni Bozhanov (Bulgaria)
Mariangela Vacatello (Italy)
Wu Di (China)
I have to say that I suspected the tie as soon as I saw two silver trophies on the table. The no prize for the crystal confirmed my suspicions (the crystal is only to be awarded if there is a single gold medalist and a single silver medalist).
The jury had choices ranging from the eccentric—Bozhanov, who imposed his personality onto the music to the point where he reportedly incensed maestro James Conlon with his “with me or against me” attitude in the concerti—to the conservative: pick the pianist who didn’t miss more than a handful of notes during the entire competition. The selection of Zhang—who, at the ripe old age of nineteen years and four days, becomes the youngest gold medalist in Cliburn history—falls solidly on the latter end of that scale.
Personally, I was convinced that Son would win at least a share of the gold; of the finalists, she seemed to me the most well-rounded. But one can perhaps begin to understand the jury’s decision when one considers their instructions: to identify the competitor(s) most ready for the slew of concerts that await the Cliburn gold medalist. And at the end of the finals, the two eventual co-winners were the only competitors with any gas left in the tank.
Zhang, as has already been mentioned, is a phenom in the technical aspect of the word: the guy simply does not play wrong notes. And lost in the big discussion over Tsujii’s blindness was the fact that he quietly absorbed everything the competition threw at him. Not that this should have been surprising, of course: he has adeptly handled all of the other challenges life has thrown his way, so what is a little Cliburn competition, by way of comparison? (That’s the last time I’ll ever use the words “little” and “Cliburn” in the same sentence, by the way.)
So yes, Zhang and Tsujii were, in a way, the two competitors most capable of handling the responsibilities of a Cliburn gold medalist, in that they never seemed to tire. And that is the knock on the Cliburn: that in the course of some two and a half hours of recitals, a piano quintet, and two concerti, the Cliburn has the ability to denigrate into a “play ‘til you drop” battle of attrition, where the last pianist standing—or who hasn’t fallen off the bench—wins.
Ultimately, this is just the way the Cliburn goes. Everything that distinguishes the Cliburn competition—from the marathon four-plus hours of repertoire requirements, to the three years of concert management awarded to the finalists, to the criteria the jury is asked to utilize in their decision—all this has given the Cliburn the reputation of selecting for stamina and marketability, sometimes at the expense of artistry.
Not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with that, of course: stamina and marketability are inescapable requirements of the profession. But the results of the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition will certainly do nothing to dispel the notion that the competition perhaps focuses a little too much on those aspects.